JERUSALEM: Iran on Monday (Jun 8) announced the end of its military operations against Israel, but warned of harsher attacks if Israel resumed attacks on Lebanon.
Iran had delivered a “painful response” to Israel and “accordingly, the cessation of armed forces operations is hereby announced”, the Khatam al-Anbiya command said in a statement carried by state television.
“However, it is emphasised that should acts of aggression and hostility continue, including in southern Lebanon, much more severe and crushing measures than before will follow,” it added.
Iran’s president Masoud Pezeshkian also said that Tehran was still at the negotiating table after halting attacks on Israel.
“Diplomacy and defence are the two wings of national power; we have neither left the battlefield nor the negotiating table,” Pezeshkian said in a post on X, adding that Tehran “will not retreat in the face of any threat”.
His statement comes after United States President Donald Trump demanded that Israel and Iran “immediately stop ‘shooting'”, following a flurry of attacks that drove oil prices up around 4 per cent and threatened to wreck US-led efforts to broker a deal to end the war.
Israel on Monday also halted strikes on Iran at the request of Trump, a senior Israeli official was cited as saying by Channel 12.
The official added that if Hezbollah attacks on Israeli towns continue, Israel will attack the southern suburbs of Beirut.
The Channel 12 report, citing the senior Israeli official, also said that Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon would continue at full strength in the coming days.
Israel hit a petrochemical plant in southwestern Iran that it said was used to produce ballistic missiles, and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said it retaliated with a strike aimed at a similar Israeli facility in the city of Haifa.
The exchange followed Israeli strikes on strongholds of Iran-backed Hezbollah in Beirut over the weekend. Tehran has repeatedly said any deal with Washington to end the conflict must include a halt to Israel’s campaign in Lebanon.
“Israel and Iran must immediately stop ‘shooting’,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social, a day after he told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to refrain from further attacks to avoid undermining the peace talks with Tehran to end the more than three-month-old conflict.
Minutes later, he added in a new post that “final negotiations” towards peace were proceeding “subject to ignorance or stupidity getting in its way”.
An Israeli military official said on Monday his country was prepared for a range of options in Iran, from several days to “as long as it takes”, adding that it had struck Iranian air defence systems that were being rebuilt after previous Israeli attacks, as well as the petrochemical plant.
In a similarly defiant vein, an Iranian military source quoted by the Tasnim news agency said Tehran was prepared for a prolonged conflict with Israel and for renewed strikes against US interests in the region.
- Source: Cna
